Living under a blocky shadow: the world of Minecraft clones

The massive success of Minecraft has spawned number of similarly themed games …

It's inevitable that others will follow in the footsteps of popularity. Minecraft has turned into a monster of a game, so it's no surprise that a number of similar titles have popped up recently. But what is it like to live in the blocky shadow of Minecraft? And how does being compared to one of the biggest indie success stories of all time affect the way a game is perceived?

Ars spoke to the developers behind games like FortressCraft and Terraria to find out.

Building a fortress

The frustrations of developers on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel are well documented. One of the few success stories, though, is a game called FortressCraft. Developed by Projector Games, the game allows you to shape the world around you using a variety of materials. It features an enormous world, plenty of freedom, and a blocky visual style.

In short, it's a lot like Minecraft, but on the Xbox 360 instead of PC.

The game is being released on XBLIG in chapters, and the developer has gone so far as to describe the first chapter as "basically Minecraft's creative [mode]" in a post on the Minecraft forums. Despite this, the developers behind the game told Ars that the constant comparisons to Minecraft were a surprise.

"Minecraft creative wasn't the first game to allow running around and building in a voxel world—Infiniminer, Voxlap, plus a dozen others [came first]," said Adam "DJArcas" Sawkins, from Projector Games, "it's simply the biggest, and it's achieved that weird gravitational mass that few other games have."

FortressCraft

Sawkins' defense is that, while FortressCraft has much in common with Minecraft—and was initially conceived as a 3D version of Dwarf Fortress—Minecraft itself was also inspired greatly by games like Infiniminer. Essentially, his belief is that the elements that make his game a clone are essential to creating a sandbox-style building game.

"The main example I give is that of a racing game," said Sawkins, who previously worked at both Codemasters and Criterion Games. "All racing games have cars, tracks, tarmac, trees, armco, AI, overtaking, braking, chicanes, and chevrons. To remove any of those things means it's no longer a racing game, apart from maybe trees. If I were to remove voxel rendering, infinitely mutable worlds, perlin generation, or—as one YouTube comment accused me of stealing from Minecraft—grass, then I no longer have a 'Minecraft clone.'

"I also no longer have a game!"

Aside from the way it looks and plays, FortressCraft also has something else in common with Minecraft: it has sold a lot of copies. In its first day of availability, the game sold 16,000 copies and, according to Sawkins, it "has sold better than anything on the XBLIG service to date" with sales approaching the $1 million mark.

Mining in 2D

A game doesn't have to look just like Minecraft to be labeled a clone, though. Terraria doesn't take place in a vast 3D world, but instead in a side-scrolling 2D environment. You mine, you craft, and it's all quite complicated and daunting. These similarities shouldn't be too surprising, though, as the two games share many of the same inspirations.

"The open gameplay and deep nature of games like Dwarf Fortress and Infiniminer was something we really wanted to explore," the development team at Re-Logic told Ars via email.

"We knew there would be some comparisons—both games share the block-based world that first appeared in games like Infiniminer," they added, when asked about the constant comparisons to Minecraft. "We believe it’s a bit of a nonissue, however, as both games are very different. We enjoy Minecraft and [Minecraft creator] Notch has made it clear he enjoys Terraria."

Terraria

In fact, when Markus "Notch" Persson tweeted about the game early in development, the team says that there was a large spike in interest in the project. When the game was finally released, it moved 50,000 copies in one day, and at its first day peak more than 17,000 people were playing Terraria at the same time. In nine days more than 200,000 copies were sold, with virtually no marketing or promotion.

Notch speaks

Speaking of Persson, as the man responsible for the phenomenon that is Minecraft, we decided to find out what his response is to the games he potentially inspired, and give him the last word.

"I strongly believe that true greatness comes from being influenced by other people's work and improving it, making your own version of it, by mixing and matching your best influences and a few original ideas of your own," Persson told Ars.

"Both FortressCraft and Terraria appear to be inspired by Minecraft, which in turn was inspired by many other games, including Infiniminer, Dwarf Fortress, and Dungeon Keeper. However, I do not believe you can achieve something great or interesting by merely attempting to emulate something successful. It becomes especially embarrassing if you publicly deny any inspiration when it's painfully clear how much of a copy it is.

"Terraria is an amazing game, and if Minecraft is any inspiration for it, I feel proud to be part of its lineage. I play it frequently, and I can't wait to see what the future holds for it. FortressCraft is an obvious attempt to just take something popular and clone it as closely as possible. I still think it's important that people are allowed and able to do things like that, but it's hardly graceful."

"Both FortressCraft and Terraria appear to be inspired by Minecraft, which in turn was inspired by many other games, including Infiniminer, Dwarf Fortress, and Dungeon Keeper. However, I do not believe you can achieve something great or interesting by merely attempting to emulate something successful. It becomes especially embarrassing if you publicly deny any inspiration when it's painfully clear how much of a copy it is."

This whole paragraph pretty much summarizes Blizzard as a game company.

Everything Blizzard has done has been inspired by something else. Warhammer being one of the most glaring examples.

But it's not just copy/paste that made them the massive world superpower that they are today, it's all about taking those ideas(even if they were inspired by someone else's) and making them better - making the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

But that brings the problem that people will compare successors based on the most popular of examples that they know of, and will selectively ignore what existed before it and inspired it. Sadly, I've seen far too many ignorant people make the claim that Warhammer 40,000 is a ripoff of Starcraft/Warcraft.

One of reasons that Minecraft was a success is because it was a stupidly simple game that lacked high end textures.

When you add those things back you in effect create Minecraft without the soul.

I wonder if Minecraft could ever be a competitive e-sports game with the right mods or developer direction. I only ask because it sets up a stupid pun that came to mind with, AdamM's post. Beaus if Minecraft became an e-sports thing it would inevitable become big in Korea and then you could say that other me-too games had no Seoul. Yeah, that sucked, but oh well.

"The main example I give is that of a racing game," said Sawkins, who previously worked at both Codemasters and Criterion Games. "All racing games have cars, tracks, tarmac, trees, armco, AI, overtaking, braking, chicanes, and chevrons. To remove any of those things means it's no longer a racing game."

I submit that you look up the indie game Proun, a racing game with practically none of these features, yet is undeniably a racing game:

Sawkins makes it sound like only games that play like Starcraft are RTS's, only games that look like Call of Duty are shooters, and only games that include My Little Ponies are intended to be played by girls. In short, his views are too constricting.

One of reasons that Minecraft was a success is because it was a stupidly simple game that lacked high end textures.

When you add those things back you in effect create Minecraft without the soul.

/me looks at the countless texture packs on the Minecraft forums.

Success because it doesn't have 'high end' textures... right...

I think you're missing the point. Minecraft was developed as a game that anyone and everyone could play regardless of skill, or their PC hardware. The texture packs are for those that do have the hardware to push the stuff, and those folks are generally in the more limited hardcore crowd. Fortresscraft sort of misses the mark WRT the everyman market that Minecraft is after. Not that there's a problem with that.

One of reasons that Minecraft was a success is because it was a stupidly simple game that lacked high end textures.

When you add those things back you in effect create Minecraft without the soul.

I disagree. Minecraft isn't Minecraft because it lacks good graphics. It would be the same game, probably without the quaint "rustic" appeal, but it would be the same game nonetheless. The game play is what makes Minecraft a good game.

turbobeard wrote:

LEGO should have gotten in on this immediately. This whole movement is just digital legos.

There should be an official LEGO Minecraft boxed set. Angry Birds licenses their crap to everyone that wants it so why not?

I think you're missing the point. Minecraft was developed as a game that anyone and everyone could play regardless of skill, or their PC hardware. The texture packs are for those that do have the hardware to push the stuff, and those folks are generally in the more limited hardcore crowd. Fortresscraft sort of misses the mark WRT the everyman market that Minecraft is after. Not that there's a problem with that.

I think you're missing the point. Minecraft was developed as a game that anyone and everyone could play regardless of skill, or their PC hardware. The texture packs are for those that do have the hardware to push the stuff, and those folks are generally in the more limited hardcore crowd. Fortresscraft sort of misses the mark WRT the everyman market that Minecraft is after. Not that there's a problem with that.

Seeing as how FortressCraft was designed for the 360, a completely standard hardware platform, you may want to revise your argument.

Yeah my brother played ForetressCraft, and told me how awesome it was, and then I showed him Minecraft, and he loved that even more, but he can't use PC controls for crap, so he went back to ForetressCraft *sigh*

The question is when is Mahjong going to finish the Xperia Play app already That would be such an awesome way to get through the lag of an average work day.

One of reasons that Minecraft was a success is because it was a stupidly simple game that lacked high end textures.

When you add those things back you in effect create Minecraft without the soul.

/me looks at the countless texture packs on the Minecraft forums.

Success because it doesn't have 'high end' textures... right...

I think you're missing the point. Minecraft was developed as a game that anyone and everyone could play regardless of skill, or their PC hardware. The texture packs are for those that do have the hardware to push the stuff, and those folks are generally in the more limited hardcore crowd. Fortresscraft sort of misses the mark WRT the everyman market that Minecraft is after. Not that there's a problem with that.

I think you're missing the point. This is a XB360 clone of minecraft. Id say with a good level of certainty that all 360 will be able to play this. Do you really think that these are ''high res'' textures?

Im barely getting 500FPS with Minecraft on the PC btw, almost playable

I think overall, MC has the best chance of survival, b/c we've already seen mods that extend it to crazy places. But, I feel Notch is really resting on his laurels. His development of the game is still slow, it's buggy, and the mod'ing scene is still hackish at best. Meanwhile, MC clones are popping up. Sooner or later one is going to show up with just the right amount of mod'ing support and other things to blow past Notch's game and eat his lunch. I stopped playing it when I got bored waiting for updates like "ZOMG, TRAPDOORS!" And multi-player got old fast since it's so easily hacked and griefed. And PVP servers suck, b/c everyone just uses warp commands to fly from spawn to their base 1000 miles away to mine for diamonds, then back to spawn again with their diamond gear to talk crap and joust a bit. It got pretty routine and boring. Jack of all trades, master of none.

One day, someone shall develop an elegant GUI for Dwarf Fortress. And the earth shall tremble and split open and dwarfs shall spew forth and drown the world in a torrent of booze and cats and all other games shall weep tears of blood and lament their inadequacy.

One day, someone shall develop an elegant GUI for Dwarf Fortress. And the earth shall tremble and split open and dwarfs shall spew forth and drown the world in a torrent of booze and cats and all other games shall weep tears of blood and lament their inadequacy.

This same argument happened with the iPad, and other ideas throughout history. A lot of people think that Apple created the tablet form factor with touch control, when they did just like Notch, they took what worked and made it their own experience and now tablets are popping up for sale in places that you wouldn't expect.

Sawkins makes it sound like only games that play like Starcraft are RTS's, only games that look like Call of Duty are shooters, and only games that include My Little Ponies are intended to be played by girls. In short, his views are too constricting.

Ugh... I still regret buying that game immediately after reading Ben's write up on it a month ago. I don't deny that it's a racing game, I just had no interest in it after trying a few tracks.

But that brings the problem that people will compare successors based on the most popular of examples that they know of, and will selectively ignore what existed before it and inspired it. Sadly, I've seen far too many ignorant people make the claim that Warhammer 40,000 is a ripoff of Starcraft/Warcraft.

I think you're missing the point. Minecraft was developed as a game that anyone and everyone could play regardless of skill, or their PC hardware. The texture packs are for those that do have the hardware to push the stuff, and those folks are generally in the more limited hardcore crowd. Fortresscraft sort of misses the mark WRT the everyman market that Minecraft is after. Not that there's a problem with that.

Minecraft does look like crap, but I think that has more to do with an unskilled/lazy developer (come on, not even a fullscreen mode?) than an attempt to make it hardware friendly. I've tried running the game on Intel integrated graphics, and it was not pretty - I had to resort to 800x600 with everything turned off to minimum, and it still only managed <10 FPS. The game needs a decent, modern video card to produce its Nintendo-64 style graphics.

He should hire a graphics artist and write a proper 3D-engine. Personally, I would find it more satisfying to build stuff in Minecraft if there was some more variety and things looked a little better. I played it for the first in-game night, but after building a small shelter and surviving the night, I couldn't find the motivation to keep playing it. What's the point when everything looks the same?

I think you're missing the point. Minecraft was developed as a game that anyone and everyone could play regardless of skill, or their PC hardware. The texture packs are for those that do have the hardware to push the stuff, and those folks are generally in the more limited hardcore crowd. Fortresscraft sort of misses the mark WRT the everyman market that Minecraft is after. Not that there's a problem with that.

That argument is nonsense given Fortresscraft is an XBOX title.

Quote:

I think you're missing the point. This is a XB360 clone of minecraft. Id say with a good level of certainty that all 360 will be able to play this. Do you really think that these are ''high res'' textures?

Im[sic] barely getting 500FPS with Minecraft on the PC btw, almost playable

You may be correct. I'm really only barely familiar with Minecraft. If so, please pardon my ignorance. I'm just getting into more indie stuff than ever since the commercial big budget games are boring me to tears lately.

It doesn't help that Minecraft is very trivial to clone since it's basically a programmer's game with few art assets and simple rendering requirements. One competent coder could probably make a passable clone of the game in a long weekend. And if you bring it to a platform where it's not currently available, you could make some good money.

"Both FortressCraft and Terraria appear to be inspired by Minecraft, which in turn was inspired by many other games, including Infiniminer, Dwarf Fortress, and Dungeon Keeper. However, I do not believe you can achieve something great or interesting by merely attempting to emulate something successful. It becomes especially embarrassing if you publicly deny any inspiration when it's painfully clear how much of a copy it is."

This whole paragraph pretty much summarizes Blizzard as a game company.

Everything Blizzard has done has been inspired by something else. Warhammer being one of the most glaring examples.

But it's not just copy/paste that made them the massive world superpower that they are today, it's all about taking those ideas(even if they were inspired by someone else's) and making them better - making the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

In this 11-year-old article at Salon it was reported that Blizzard acknowledged Nethack as Diablo's inspiration.

Minecraft does look like crap, but I think that has more to do with an unskilled/lazy developer (come on, not even a fullscreen mode?)

F11.

Quote:

I've tried running the game on Intel integrated graphics, and it was not pretty - I had to resort to 800x600 with everything turned off to minimum, and it still only managed <10 FPS. The game needs a decent, modern video card to produce its Nintendo-64 style graphics.

I get ~25-30 on an intel integrated laptop with the new lighting engine and normal distance rendering, which is plenty enough to be enjoyable. No idea why you're getting so low values.

No game is for everyone of course. This one doesn't seem to be for you. No harm in that. Just give it a pass and spend your time playing something you enjoy.

He should hire a graphics artist and write a proper 3D-engine. Personally, I would find it more satisfying to build stuff in Minecraft if there was some more variety and things looked a little better. I played it for the first in-game night, but after building a small shelter and surviving the night, I couldn't find the motivation to keep playing it. What's the point when everything looks the same?

The more complexity you add to the default environment the less flexibility you provide to the end user. The more creative the textures and objects the less creative the individual can be in the environment.

As with Lego the reason it gained so much popularity is due to simple building blocks that fuel the imagination to build grand objects and places.

"Both FortressCraft and Terraria appear to be inspired by Minecraft, which in turn was inspired by many other games, including Infiniminer, Dwarf Fortress, and Dungeon Keeper. However, I do not believe you can achieve something great or interesting by merely attempting to emulate something successful. It becomes especially embarrassing if you publicly deny any inspiration when it's painfully clear how much of a copy it is."

This whole paragraph pretty much summarizes Blizzard as a game company.

Everything Blizzard has done has been inspired by something else. Warhammer being one of the most glaring examples.

But it's not just copy/paste that made them the massive world superpower that they are today, it's all about taking those ideas(even if they were inspired by someone else's) and making them better - making the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

But that brings the problem that people will compare successors based on the most popular of examples that they know of, and will selectively ignore what existed before it and inspired it. Sadly, I've seen far too many ignorant people make the claim that Warhammer 40,000 is a ripoff of Starcraft/Warcraft.

and who exactly do you claim they've copied? warcraft preceded 40k by 10 years, unless you're talking about board games I don't see how warhammer of all sources could have possibly been the inspiration for anything they've ever done since then.

in any case I find the whole "this game is similar to that game" observations to be the absolute lowest form of criticism possible, including reviews. it basically shows you're incapable of judging the mechanics of any game based on their own merits.

I think you're missing the point. Minecraft was developed as a game that anyone and everyone could play regardless of skill, or their PC hardware. The texture packs are for those that do have the hardware to push the stuff, and those folks are generally in the more limited hardcore crowd. Fortresscraft sort of misses the mark WRT the everyman market that Minecraft is after. Not that there's a problem with that.

Minecraft does look like crap, but I think that has more to do with an unskilled/lazy developer (come on, not even a fullscreen mode?) than an attempt to make it hardware friendly. I've tried running the game on Intel integrated graphics, and it was not pretty - I had to resort to 800x600 with everything turned off to minimum, and it still only managed <10 FPS. The game needs a decent, modern video card to produce its Nintendo-64 style graphics.

He should hire a graphics artist and write a proper 3D-engine. Personally, I would find it more satisfying to build stuff in Minecraft if there was some more variety and things looked a little better. I played it for the first in-game night, but after building a small shelter and surviving the night, I couldn't find the motivation to keep playing it. What's the point when everything looks the same?

I'm currently 'faffing about' in Minecraft, with a 128bit texture mod. Whilst initially quite cool (especially the water), it really adds nothing to a game where the minimum size of anything is a cubic metre. I think 20,000 copies had sold when I bought into minecraft, so I've played a lot.

Some people don't "get" the attraction of Minecraft, others get absolutely addicted, for hours and hours, days and weeks.

Stuff you could draw in minutes, they'll laboriously build, block by block, risking losing all their inventory from almost unavoidable 'falling damage' (when you fall off your 40-block high skyscraper and smack into the ground -- Score &E0, game over (respawn).

Notch's implementation with its chunky graphics, captures your imagination. Some people like to take Minecraft to the extreme, hard mode, monsters everywhere, everything gathered and crafted 'otherwise it's just cheating', and people like me love /give mode, absolutely peaceful, "creative in SMP" so that others can see the results of your efforts.

Clones? Let them come. The gaming community has dozens upon dozens of First Person Shooters, Car games, Sports, Puzzle, and RPG games, why not completely different Minecraft clones? Perhaps where you build with much smaller pieces (sand-grains) and have to use a magnifying glass to make sure you put things in their proper place and align them -- the OCD players would flock to it like the addicts that they are! "Finally I can build a building that looks like a building!"

Snort.

There's no argument that Notch built his game on the ideas of Infiniminer, Dwarf Fortress etc, and Terraria is a '2-d' Minecraft "clone" with so much more happening ... viva la difference.

There is no reason whatsoever to poo-poo someone else's Minecraft clone as 'merely a copy'.

Apple O/S Lion -- Merely a "copy" of Ubuntu, that you have to pay for!

I bought terrarria during the steam summer sale, played it 8h and then dropped it.

The inspiration is clear but it s definitely not a Minecraft clone. Much more action-oriented with lot of different enemies and equipment to fight them. This also means that people think there is a goal and an end to terraria : once you fought all bosses and have the best armor you re pretty much done with your current character / world, because construction is not as easy, rich or fun than minecraft. In terraria you most of the time only build buildings you need to protect yourself, you almost never build for building sake

In the end i dropped it long before reaching the end game because i made the mistake of creating a big size world at creation time and this makes the gameplay too slow, you have to spend several hours to have enough material to make your first armor set

Minecraft does look like crap, but I think that has more to do with an unskilled/lazy developer (come on, not even a fullscreen mode?) than an attempt to make it hardware friendly. I've tried running the game on Intel integrated graphics, and it was not pretty - I had to resort to 800x600 with everything turned off to minimum, and it still only managed <10 FPS. The game needs a decent, modern video card to produce its Nintendo-64 style graphics.

He should hire a graphics artist and write a proper 3D-engine. Personally, I would find it more satisfying to build stuff in Minecraft if there was some more variety and things looked a little better. I played it for the first in-game night, but after building a small shelter and surviving the night, I couldn't find the motivation to keep playing it. What's the point when everything looks the same?

Minecraft's charm is with its low-res textures. I've tried hi-res ones and they all look like crap. I've seen mods that add extrusion mapping, shaders and all sorts to the engine and again, they look like crap; they just take most of the charm away. The enjoyability of a game is not measured by the detail of its graphics and you sound like a graphics whore when you say otherwise.